After creating reports in Power BI Desktop, the next step is to publish, share, and collaborate on them using Power BI Service. Power BI Service is Microsoft's cloud-based business intelligence platform that enables users to securely access reports and dashboards, collaborate with teams, schedule data refreshes, manage workspaces, and share insights across an organization.
As part of the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem, Power BI Service integrates with OneLake and other Fabric experiences, providing a unified platform for modern business intelligence, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making.
In this lesson, you'll learn what Power BI Service is, explore its licensing options, understand its key components such as workspaces, apps, dataflows, semantic models, reports, and dashboards, and discover how organizations use it to securely share and manage analytics solutions.
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What is Power BI Service?
Power BI Service is Microsoft's cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for publishing, sharing, collaborating on, and managing Power BI content. After creating reports in Power BI Desktop, users publish them to Power BI Service, where they can securely share reports, dashboards, semantic models, and apps with others.
Today, Power BI Service is also available as the Power BI experience within Microsoft Fabric. Users can access Power BI through either the traditional Power BI Service portal (app.powerbi.com) or the Microsoft Fabric portal (app.fabric.microsoft.com). The Fabric portal provides a unified environment where Power BI works alongside other Fabric experiences such as Data Engineering, Data Factory, Data Science, Data Warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence, and OneLake.
Power BI Service enables features such as scheduled data refresh, collaboration through workspaces, row-level security (RLS), subscriptions, deployment pipelines, and integration with Microsoft Fabric. Within Fabric, Power BI content can seamlessly interact with other Fabric items such as Lakehouses, Warehouses, Notebooks, Data Pipelines, and Semantic Models, enabling end-to-end analytics from data ingestion to business reporting.
Whether you're a report creator or a report consumer, the type of Power BI license or Microsoft Fabric capacity assigned to you determines the features you can access.
Note: Although many organizations now use the Microsoft Fabric portal, the core capabilities of Power BI Service remain the same. Microsoft Fabric simply provides a unified platform that brings together Power BI and other analytics experiences under a single interface.
Power BI Licensing
Power BI offers different licensing options depending on how you create, share, and consume content.
Free License
Users can sign in to Power BI Service (https://app.powerbi.com/) with a free Microsoft account or an organizational account.
With a Free license, users can:
- Create reports and dashboards in My Workspace
- Connect to supported data sources
- Publish reports to their personal workspace
- View content shared from workspaces running on Microsoft Fabric Capacity (F64 or higher) or Power BI Premium (P1 or higher), provided you have the necessary permissions. Workspaces running on Fabric capacities below F64 require viewers to have a Power BI Pro license.
However, Free users cannot share reports or collaborate in shared workspaces unless they are assigned a Pro license.
You can check your current license by selecting your Profile icon → View account in the Power BI Service.
You need to have either a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) License if you want to publish and share reports within or outside your organization.
Power BI Pro License
Power BI Pro is an individual user license designed for report authors and collaborators. It allows users to create, publish, share, and collaborate on reports, dashboards, semantic models, and apps within Power BI Service.
With a Pro license, users can:
- Create and publish Power BI reports.
- Share reports and dashboards with other users who have a Pro license.
- Collaborate in shared workspaces.
- Consume content hosted in Microsoft Fabric Capacity (or existing Premium Capacity workspaces) without requiring every consumer to have a Pro license, provided appropriate permissions are granted.
Premium Per User (PPU) License
Premium Per User (PPU) is an individual license that includes all the capabilities of Power BI Pro, along with advanced Premium features available on a per-user basis.
In addition to Pro features, PPU provides access to capabilities such as:
- Copilot and AI-powered features
- Larger semantic model sizes
- Advanced deployment pipelines
- Enhanced performance and scalability
- Other Premium capabilities without requiring dedicated capacity
Content published in a PPU workspace can only be accessed by users who also have a PPU license, unless it is moved to a workspace running on Microsoft Fabric Capacity.
Microsoft Fabric Capacity (formerly Power BI Premium Capacity)
Microsoft Fabric Capacity provides dedicated compute resources for organizations and supports workloads across Microsoft Fabric, including Power BI.
Workspaces assigned to Fabric Capacity enable organizations to:
- Share Power BI content with users who have Free licenses (subject to permissions).
- Run larger semantic models and enterprise-scale analytics.
- Support advanced Fabric workloads such as Lakehouses, Warehouses, Data Engineering, Data Science, Real-Time Intelligence, and Power BI.
- Improve performance, scalability, and governance for enterprise BI solutions.
Note: Microsoft recommends Microsoft Fabric Capacity (F SKUs) for all new deployments. Power BI Premium Capacity (P SKUs) is no longer available for new purchases and is available only to eligible existing customers through renewal. Organizations should plan their transition to Fabric Capacity to continue using Premium capabilities. After a P SKU subscription expires, Microsoft provides a limited grace period before the capacity is suspended.
Power BI Pricing
Microsoft periodically updates Power BI licensing and pricing. Rather than listing fixed prices, it's recommended to check the official Microsoft pricing page for the most up-to-date information on:
- Power BI Free
- Power BI Pro
- Power BI Premium Per User (PPU)
- Microsoft Fabric Capacity
Note: Pricing may vary by region and is subject to change. Refer to the official Microsoft Power BI Pricing page link for the latest information.
Power BI Licensing Comparison
Feature | Free | Pro | Premium Per User (PPU) | Microsoft Fabric Capacity (F SKU) |
Best for | Individual learning and personal analysis | Business users and team collaboration | Power users requiring advanced Power BI features | Organizations requiring enterprise-scale BI and Microsoft Fabric workloads |
Who needs a license? | Individual user | Every creator and collaborator | Every creator and consumer in a PPU workspace | Creators typically need Pro or PPU. Free users can consume content only from Microsoft Fabric Capacity (F64+) or Power BI Premium (P1+) workspaces with Viewer access. |
Create reports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (via licensed creators) |
Publish reports | ✓ (My Workspace only) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Share reports | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Collaborate in shared workspaces | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
View shared reports | Only from Microsoft Fabric Capacity (F64+) or Power BI Premium (P1+) workspaces, with permission | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Scheduled refresh | Up to 8 refreshes/day (My Workspace) | Up to 8 refreshes/day | Up to 48 refreshes/day | Capacity-dependent (up to 48/day depending on configuration) |
Copilot | Varies by workspace configuration | Varies by workspace configuration | Varies by workspace configuration | Varies by workspace configuration |
Paginated Reports | ✓ (My Workspace only) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Large semantic models | ✗ | Up to 1 GB | Up to 100 GB | Enterprise-scale |
Deployment Pipelines | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
Microsoft Fabric workloads | ✗ | ✗ | Power BI Premium features only (non-Power BI Fabric items require Fabric Capacity) | ✓ Full support |
Dedicated compute capacity | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Typical use case | Learning, personal reports | Team reporting and collaboration | Advanced analytics and Premium Power BI features | Enterprise BI, organization-wide sharing, and Microsoft Fabric workloads |
Note: Copilot availability depends on the assigned Microsoft Fabric capacity, licensing, tenant settings, and regional availability. Refer to the latest Microsoft Learn documentation for the current requirements.
Components of Power BI Service:
Once report authors create reports in Power BI Desktop or Power BI Service, they can publish them to Power BI Service for collaboration, sharing, and centralized management. Power BI Service provides several components that help organizations securely organize, distribute, and manage their business intelligence content. As part of Microsoft Fabric, these components work seamlessly with other Fabric experiences to support end-to-end analytics.
Workspaces
Workspaces are collaborative environments where users can create, manage, and share Power BI and Microsoft Fabric content. They serve as the primary collaboration area for teams and act as containers for organizing analytics assets.
A workspace can contain reports, dashboards, semantic models, dataflows, apps, and other Microsoft Fabric items such as Lakehouses, Warehouses, Notebooks, Data Pipelines, Dataflows Gen2, Eventstreams, KQL Databases, and Real-Time Dashboards.
All items stored within a Fabric workspace use OneLake as the unified storage layer, enabling seamless data sharing, governance, and collaboration across Microsoft Fabric experiences without requiring data duplication.
Power BI Service provides two workspace experiences:
- My Workspace – A personal workspace where users can create, manage, and test their own content. By default, only the workspace owner has access to this content unless it is explicitly shared.
- Workspace – A collaborative workspace where multiple users can create, edit, and manage content together. Access is controlled through workspace roles such as Admin, Member, Contributor, and Viewer, allowing organizations to securely manage permissions and collaboration.
Apps
Apps provide a simple and secure way to distribute Power BI content to end users. Report authors can package reports, dashboards, semantic models, and other related content into a single app that users can easily install and access.
Apps are designed primarily for content consumption. End users can interact with reports and dashboards based on their permissions but cannot modify the published content.
Apps also support audiences, allowing report authors to deliver different reports, dashboards, and navigation experiences to different groups of users within a single app. This simplifies content distribution while ensuring each audience sees only the content intended for them.
Dataflows
Microsoft recommends Dataflows Gen2 for new solutions because they provide improved performance, better scalability, and deeper integration with Microsoft Fabric workloads such as Lakehouses and Warehouses. Dataflows Gen1 remains supported as a legacy experience but no longer receives new features.
Semantic Models (formerly Datasets)
A Semantic Model is the analytical layer that stores data, relationships, measures, hierarchies, and business logic used for reporting. Semantic models are created by importing data or connecting to supported data sources and serve as the foundation for Power BI reports.
Multiple reports can connect to and reuse a single semantic model, promoting consistency and reducing data duplication across an organization.
Note: Microsoft has renamed Datasets to Semantic Models. Although the functionality remains the same, "Semantic Model" is now the preferred terminology throughout Power BI and Microsoft Fabric.
Reports
A Power BI Report is a collection of one or more pages containing interactive visualizations such as charts, tables, maps, KPIs, and slicers. All visuals within a report are based on a single semantic model.
Reports support interactive features such as filtering, drill-down, drill-through, bookmarks, tooltips, and cross-filtering. Reports can be created using both Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service.
Dashboards
A dashboard is a single-page canvas that displays important business metrics by combining visualizations pinned from one or more reports. Dashboards provide a consolidated view of key information, making it easier for users to monitor business performance at a glance.
Dashboards can only be created and managed in Power BI Service. They support features such as data alerts, quick navigation to the underlying reports, sharing, and collaboration, enabling users to monitor key business metrics and take action when important values change.
Conclusion
Power BI Service is Microsoft's cloud-based platform for publishing, sharing, collaborating on, and managing Power BI content across an organization. Whether accessed through the traditional Power BI Service portal or as the Power BI experience within Microsoft Fabric, it enables users to securely create, distribute, and consume business intelligence solutions. With features such as workspaces, apps, semantic models, scheduled refresh, row-level security, and seamless integration with Microsoft Fabric, Power BI Service provides everything needed to build, share, and manage modern analytics solutions. Understanding Power BI Service is an essential step toward creating scalable, secure, and collaborative business intelligence solutions in the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem.
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